This disclosure relates generally to antennas and, more particularly, to the integration of aerogels into antenna design.
Advances in the design and optimization of communications equipment are of paramount interest in many areas. Entities ranging in size from entire militaries to individual travelers can benefit from communications equipment providing better performance than previous generations, especially when the equipment is also lighter, stronger or less expensive.
Critical to an ever-increasing number of electronic devices (e.g., computers, cell phones, navigation systems, et cetera) are transmit/receive (Tx/Rx) antennas. Tx/Rx antennas improve, and are indeed often necessary, for a variety of systems employing wireless signals, such as voice, data, navigation, and others.
Groups of systems transmitting and receiving signals via antenna are often collocated. For example, a military or commercial aircraft such as a Boeing 737 can have dozens of antenna systems integrated throughout the aircraft, sometimes in excess of 100. Even an individual service member in a western military can have a variety of antennas on their person, as voice, data, navigation and other Tx/Rx systems are common in an operational environment. Although these two example applications are different, they share several common requirements. Both stand to benefit from reduction of the number, weight and expense of antennas. Likewise, both examples benefit from increases to the robustness, performance and adaptability of antennas.
Groups of antennas can also be used in arrays. Many current antennas used in large-scale applications are arrays based on Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMIC). These arrays exhibit relatively low efficiency, can be very heavy, and can be expensive to acquire and maintain. Alternatively, more affordable arrays (which are primarily passive) are made with standard commercially available substrates. Current commercial substrates are manufactured in quantity with arbitrary dielectric properties and thicknesses, limiting possible applications and adaptability. Customizing commercial substrate applications comes at increased expense, and still may not support the ideal size, weight, performance and mechanical properties sought by a purchaser.
Accordingly, there is a need to design and integrate antennas utilizing materials with suitable properties that improve the performance, adaptability, portability and affordability of the antennas.